* Republican Katherine Harris will be the next secretary of state. Republican Tom Gallagher will be the next commissioner of education. The rest of the incumbent Cabinet members will easily win re-election.

* Democratic state Reps. Stacy Ritter of Coral Springs and Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston will be re-elected easily. The reason? Their districts are overwhelmingly Democratic and their opponents have run pathetic campaigns.

More predictions

* Kristin Jacobs, the Democratic nominee for Broward County Commission, will beat Republican Bob Shelley handily. This is still a Democratic county. * The School Board winners will be Democrats Carole Andrews, Bob Parks and Paul Eichner. They can thank the way their districts were gerrymandered to include a marjority of Democrats and not the quality of their campaigns or ideas. Eichner, in particular, highlighted his primary campaign with nasty personal attacks.

Judie Budnick will be the only Republican to win a School Board seat. She ran a credible, clean campaign on the issues. Her Democratic opponent Sandy Graber hardly ran at all.

Incumbent Darla Carter will win easily.

* Kathleen Ireland will win a seat on the county court. Mitch Burnstein ran a good race.

Although the race is nonpartisan, the word is spreading in the condos that Burnstein is a Republican.

* Then there is the toughest race to call _ the Florida House race in District 92 through central Broward. Democratic state Rep. Tracy Stafford of Wilton Manors was sidelined after his foot was amputated as the result of diabetes. His campaigning has been done by surrogates, other politicians and Young Democrats from across the state.

Republican challenger George LeMieux, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer, has conducted a textbook grassroots campaign. He has personally visited more than 10,000 homes. He has run a squeaky-clean campaign to date. Despite pressure from the state GOP to use nasty attack ads, he has stuck to issues.

Which one wins? I've got to give the edge to Stafford, because Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost 3,000 voters. But there are 11,556 registered independents, and Stafford's campaign has been amazingly weak, even before his hospitalization. Don't be surprised by an upset.

Other campaign notes

* Democratic Sheriff Ken Jenne has crossed party lines and is supporting Republican candidate Budnick. This has more to do with Jenne getting back at former state Rep. Ben Graber of Coral Springs, whose wife is Budnick's opponent. Graber and Jenne, a former state senator, scrapped repeatedly in the Legislature and dislike each other.

* State Rep. John Rayson, D-Pompano Beach, is backing the union move to organize employees of the public North Broward Hospital District. It should help him get union support if he decides to run for Congress when term limits force his departure from Tallahassee in two years.